A Day in the Life...

As the result of popular demand (two emails from my grandmother) I will now describe the mundane details of my average day.

Ahem...

Morning: I usually wake up around 6:00am, shower, make breakfast and veg in front of news feeds on my computer until just before 7:00 when I head to the train. That schedule has been pushed back an hour during the summer when students are out of school because the bus schedule has been reduced to only one bus at 8:30. No need to leave the house until 8:00. For breakfast, I usually eat brown rice topped either with natto (fermented, stinky, slimy, stringy soy beans) and green onions OR banana, peanuts and raisins with a tiny bit of milk to help it all stick together. I refer to the latter as "Japanese Oatmeal" although I'm pretty sure there isn't a Japanese person in the world who eats this. The former option is a perfectly normal breakfast and probably directly contributes to the country's longevity.

After getting ready, I walk down the hill to the train station - about 10 minutes. I try to say good morning to any elderly ladies I meet, which usually gets me smiles and hearty "good morning"s back, so I keep doing it. I have not been so lucky engaging the men in niceties - so far only a few confused scowls a some teasing. No thank you. I believe it is actually pretty rare to talk to strangers in Japan. With the exception of old ladies, I think everyone is pretty much happier to avoid engaging in conversation.

The trains arrive exactly on the scheduled minute. The only time they fail seems to be when the weather is really nasty or if someone commits suicide - which happens periodically. Surprisingly little considering how many people use the trains and how absent they are of any safety measures to prevent suicide.... but its still pretty sad. The incidents have apparently gone up in the latest economic depression.

I take the train to Sannomiya (the shopping district in the heart of the city and essentially the center of activity for Kobe) and then I transfer either to the light rail (the Portliner) that runs out to the island where I work, or to a bus (if you time it right, its a luxury bus instead of a city bus). The bus is way more convenient, cheap and less crowded, so I do what I can to catch it in the morning. If i miss it - or arrive before it starts at 8:03, I take the Portliner. Of course, when I'm good I try to walk either from my house, or the second half from Sannomiya to my school. I haven't been good in quite a while, though, due to heat and humidity.

At school

Once I'm at school, my morning consists of last minute prep for classes, then two hour-and-a-half English classes. Some days I only teach one of those blocks, but teaching two is fairly common. After I teach I usually head to the cafeteria at the school next door. I like the food there better (though my school's cafeteria is way better than anything I ever got in a cafeteria in the US - no chicken nuggets!). At the cafeterias I've been to in Kobe, the standard procedure is to buy a ticket from a machine for whatever meal you want (there are usually 7 or 8 set menu items and 3-5 rotating meals) then I take it to the counter, get the food and have a seat.

After lunch, I head back to the school. For most of the teachers the afternoon is free for lesson planning and chatting with students - which is a feature the school promotes heavily. There are a handful of students that don't really come to class, but get pretty good at English by hanging out and shooting the breeze with a bunch of native English speakers. Fall term I often had at least one afternoon class because I was teaching elective English classes to the students who were returning from the US, and classes to prepare the new crop of students for studying abroad. We still don't have schedules for next term, so I am not sure what my situation will be, then.

At about 5:30 - usually closer to 6:00 I head home. I usually just do my morning commute in reverse. I need to start trying to find conversation partners to meet with after work, but so far I haven't been able to convince myself I have the energy. I always find the energy once I'm sitting in front of someone with a cup of coffee, though, so I should just bite the bullet and do it. We'll see. SInce I am suppose to be describing a typical day and not a wished for day, let's just say I do the commute in reverse, walk to the grocery store behind the station and get either prepared food or ingredients for something Russell or I have plotted out, and then head back up the hill to home.

Evening

In the evening I usually sit in front of my computer and dig around for as much news as I can find. I do slip in a few web comics and occasionally I actually study Japanese. At some point, either Russell or I get hungry enough to cook dinner and then we get back on our computers. It is fairly frequent that I have work that I brought home to do. That usually comes out after dinner when my brain turns back on. Compared to the amount of at-home work I did in Oregon, though, this is quite reasonable. Maybe only an hour or two - unless I make the mistake of assigning essays and then make the double mistake of insisting on collecting them. That can take longer. I'm not really asked to do that, though, so I don't do it too often. Some time around 11pm or midnight I usually get up and get ready for bed. I much prefer to flop over on our floor cushions and just sleep there, but that bothers Russell (who catches the brunt of the bad mood that follows such a sleeping arrangement), so I usually get harassed into my proper bed. I try to remember to set up the rice cooker so it will go off at the appropriate time in the morning. I love having a programmable rice cooker!

The only real variations on this routine during the week is an occasional Japanese lesson on Thursday (though we prefer to meet on Saturday and then go to a cafe for cake afterwards) and now a TOEFL/English conversation lesson I give to a Chinese guy who asked for help. I meet him Wednesday after work. Sometimes, I arrive in Sannomiya about the time Russell is finishing with a conversation partner, so then we sometimes just eat out before heading home. There are so many places to eat in Sannomiya there is no reason to ever repeat a restaurant - though we have established a few favorite haunts.

Weekends are, unfortunately, similarly predictable. That will have to wait until a future post, though.

If anyone else would like to make any requests for information, feel free to leave a comment or contact me by email.